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Guns
Background * You have a right to keep and bear arms. If you are not a criminal, if you are an honest, upstanding citizen, you should have the right to keep and bear arms. * The Pennsylvania Constitution says that the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms should not be questioned. We should take that seriously. * The 1968 Gun Control Act instituted, among other things, the unconstitutional "sporting purposes" test, which stipulates that imported firearms must be "particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes." * Since 1976, the District of Columbia has been under a near total gun ban. The House voted in 2004 to repeal the ban, but it died in the Senate. * In 1986, Congress banned the manufacture of machine guns for non-military and law enforcement. :Argument: Authors of the Constitution never envisioned automatic machine guns when they wrote the Second Amendment. :Argument: Consitution authors never envisioned radio, television and the Internet, either. Yet, no one argues the First Amendment does not protect these. * In 1993, the Congress passed the Brady background registration check. Now, citizens must go to the FBI to get permission to buy a firearm. This turns the Second Amendment "right" into a "privilege." Supporters of the law try to make it more palatable by pointing out that it is "instant" and hardly an inconvenience, as if expediency makes losing liberty acceptable. * In 1996, Congress passed the gun free zones law (prohibiting firearms within 1,000 feet of any school property) and the misdemeanor gun ban (lifetime gun ban for certain misdemeanor convictions). * A handgun can be a girl's best friend. :Statistics show that if a woman resists an attacker, she is twice as likely to get hurt. But if she resists with a handgun, she is half as likely to get hurt. Not every woman would have to carry (a gun) before rapists got the message. * Professor John Lott's book, More Guns, Less Crime, shows that streets are safer when guns are in the hands of responsible citizens. * In a free country, you can purchase a handgun, for less than a television set. A handgun is the equalizer that defends the people from the predators on our streets. * Why should we make law abiding citizens lock the guns that defend them, when we don't lock up the criminals who harm? The Democrats want gun laws for the comfortable at the expense of the poor. * Planks about guns from Mark Rauterkus * Gun Facts book, version 5.1 http://fixpa.wikia.com/wiki/File:GunFacts5_1.pdf * Planks about guns from Bob O'Connor * Letter to editor about gun control * Guns-plank-cherry-tree, put a gun in every home says councilman in Cherry Tree, PA in December 2006 * The Second Amendment from TheVanguard.org * guns-plank-Paul, The DC Gun Ban from Ron Paul from March 12, 2007 * guns-Letter-PghGuy Letter to members of council and mayor of Pittsburgh about the pending lost and stolen gun law in November 2008 Links Organizations * Gun Owners of America :Rep. Ron Paul calls the Gun Onwers of America the "only no compromise gun lobby in Washington." * Fire Owners Against Crime a Western PA organization and PAC * Brady Center To Prevent Gun Violence * Pennsylvanians Against Handgun Violence Detials * Williams gun license fee increase amendment Media * NewsFlash - Pa. House to air anti-crime bills in unusual forum 8/12/2006, HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Proposals to limit handgun purchases to one per month may finally see some legislative debate in the state House of Representatives. Whether support for the idea will gather any momentum is another question, considering that hunters and other gun owners have a vast number of allies in the Legislature. The House will attempt to gauge support for a variety of crime-fighting measures — including new handgun regulations — by meeting as a 'committee of the whole' on Sept. 26 and taking informal votes. Those votes will determine which bills merit further consideration in regular session... Blogs * Gun Guys Blog -- Legislators Are Under the NRA’s Spell from May 2007 with quotes from Ed Rendell Insights Hundreds of thousands of hunters head to the woods for the opening of deer season the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend in November. The Pennsylvania Game Commission says about 900,000 hunters ventured into the forest for the 2006 season, which began November 27 and ended on December 9, 2006. Lost or Stolen Guns Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee was to vote on Lost or Stolen Gun Legislation in June, 2007. House Bill 29, Pennsylvania’s "Lost or Stolen Firearms” Legislation, introduced by State Representative Jewell Williams (D-197) would make it a crime to fail to report the loss or theft of a firearm to police within 24 hours of when you "discover or should have discovered" the missing firearms. * The PA NRA wrote that it is imperative to contact the members of the House Judiciary Committee to strongly encourage them to OPPOSE HB 29! Guns Issue in past political races 2004 Presidental Politics: John Kerry, D, a liberal anti-gun Senator, tried to morph himself into 'The Hunter.' Rarely a day passed during the latter part of the campaign without Kerry posing with a firearm and speaking about his strong support of the Second Amendment, in complete contradiction to his 20-year anti-gun voting record. Many anti-gun politicians tried to hide behind gun-friendly photo ops and empty rhetoric about how much they support gun rights. Anti-gun Senate Minority Leader, Tom Daschle, was replaced by former Representative John Thune, a strong pro-gun ally supported by Gun Owners of America's Political Victory Fund (GOA-PVF). GOA-PVF played an role in helping to elect strong pro-gun advocates to five of the six open seats. CDC Various types of gun control (waiting periods, registration and licensing, and bans on certain firearms) don't reduce violent crime. Criminals don't got to the store to buy guns. Criminals sidestep background checks and still get guns. Criminals don't obey the laws. Guns are everywhere. No legislation can overpower the natural law of supply and demand. No new measures can erase all the existing guns. With money, you'll be able to get a gun, for generations to come in the USA. Criminals buy their guns illegally and easily. The biggest fear to a felons is not the police or the prison system, but armed citizens. "When you gonna rob somebody you don't know, it makes it harder because you don't know what to expect out of them." Trick Question to gun-control advocate Rev. Al Sharpton Q: What if it were legal in America for adults to carry concealed weapons? A: Eyes opened wide saying, "We'd be living in a state of terror!" Wrong! Most states now have "right to carry" laws. And their people are not living in a state of terror. Not one of those states reported an upsurge in crime. Guns are used more than twice as often defensively as criminally. When armed men broke into Susan Gonzalez' house and shot her, she grabbed her husband's gun and started firing. "I figured if I could shoot one of them, even if we both died, someone would know who had been in my home." She killed one of the intruders. She lived. Studies on defensive use of guns find this kind of thing happens at least 700,000 times a year. And there's another myth, with a special risk of its own. The myth has it that the Supreme Court, in a case called United States v. Miller, interpreted the Second Amendment -- "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" -- as conferring a special privilege on the National Guard, and not as affirming an individual right. In fact, what the court held is only that the right to bear arms doesn't mean Congress can't prohibit certain kinds of guns that aren't necessary for the common defense. Interestingly, federal law still says every able-bodied American man from 17 to 44 is a member of the United States militia. What's the special risk? As Alex Kozinski, a federal appeals judge and an immigrant from Eastern Europe, warned in 2003, "the simple truth -- born of experience -- is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people." "The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do," Judge Kozinski noted. "But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed -- where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once."